SIR FRANCIS XAVIER ON THE JAPANSE,

Otago Witness, Issue 2203, 21 May 1896, Page 37

SIR FRANCIS XAVIER ON THE JAPANSE,

Francis Xavicr, " The Apostle of the Indies," landed at Goa, the capital of the Portuguese East, in May 1542. His missionary career, from first to' last, is sketched sympathetically in a little volams by Mary Hall M'Cleau, which MtsK» Kegan Paul hare jmt published. But, more than any other, the la»t and ihortest patfc of it, that on Japan, will interest the modern reader. After some six years' work in India, and in the Eastern Archipelago, Francis Xavier lauded iv Japan. - It is profoundly interesting (says the Daily News) to placti our present-day 'conception of Japan and the Japanese aide by side with that formed by the missionary of three and s.-halE centuries ago. His conception and our* are identical. Every word he wrote on the subject might have been written in the jear 1896. The intellectual alertness, the moral character, the tolerant, unprejudiced spirit, the honpituHty to new ideas, the energy, m*,nysidedneiH, - and gift of prompt decision which distinguish the J&panese from all Asiatic raeeo, and are the admiration of 'our time, wer« an plain to Francis Xnvier, tha AposMe of the lodiei, aa they are to us. It impresies (and amuses) one to read that there wore Japanese studeati in'the Somiuary of Goa in Xavier's time, or before it. It is aho clear that in the apostle's tim«T the JapMwso g.vuiun was pretty well appreciated all over the East. It was in Malacca, it seems, that Xavier first fell in with a "Jap." The little " Jap " " wrote down in a book " all that Xavier told him about the Christian faith. The Jnps have beeu taking notes of Europe and her instioutiooa (religious among the rest) ever since. " Hi* desire for learning is iuordinate," gays the apostle of his first Japanese acquaintance. Tho Japanese students at Goa are, doecribed by Xavier as "young men of irreproachable conduct and lively intelligence," Oue of them, says the apottle, learned to cead and write Portuguese in eight months. In one of his letters Javier writes: "Tho inhabitants (of Japan),' I ana told, have subtle minds, and long tor instruction of all kinds. All PortugU'se returning from thenco tell the same tile." Sp-akiog from his personal knowledge of the Japanese in their o<vn country Xavier cays : " The people we have encountered here surpass in moral qualities all people discovered up to this time. I thiuk thete oanuob . ez'sb a nation superior to the Japanese i» natural gifts."